"There are no words to describe the sights I saw," Meaarth began his testimony to the council. "That's understandable." Haeriid replied, nodding, "But please, start from the beginning." Meaarth looked from face to face, searching for one that would understand the horrors.
Scant days had passed since we heard about the 'newcomers'. A party was assembled, we took our finest minds and greatest patricians. I was not selected to go as I was deemed 'too important' for the younglings.
They went and none returned.
Night was falling when the first alarm was sounded. It was a cry of pain that echoed through all our minds. It was not the pain cry of a youngling who has fallen, or an elderling who has misplaced his foot. It was an intrustive pain, something hot and fierce.
The next moment we felt the sky crack and rip in two. Nothing had been felt like this in our kind for generations. Not a memory existed of a feeling like this.
Confusion reigned as everyone cried together in terror.
More pain flared through out the sunside of our family. More bright fires of fear and anguish that disappeared as quickly as they appeared. Fear speared through me for the younglings in my charge. Some were not even as old ten revolutions. I gathered as many up as I could trying to ignore the flashes I felt spreading and growing more insistent across the family.
Thirty-One.
That was all I was able to gather. Thrity-one younglings. I urged them all to the dayside. To head where light was still present, where another family might be reached. Where safety from this skyrending and pain might be escaped.
Thirty-one.
As fast as I could urge them, we fled. I felt the flashes of pain and did my best to ignore them. We went until our movement burned in our legs and our lungs screamed for rest. Then we stopped. I had no sense of time then. Just fear and desire to escape.
As we lay down to recover, I pulled the younglings to me. I tried my best to send feelings of calm and peace but there was still the undertone of pain and fear throbbing from just out of our reach. I could not resist the dreamland and I fell under we had lost them I thought. We were too far for them to follow for at least a day.
I was wrong.
It was still dark and much time must have not passed. I sensed the younglings becoming restless and then pain flashes and skyrending. Groups of younglings shrieked and ran. They ran directly toward the skyrending. Their pain was my pain. Their end, mine.
I gathered up what I could of the remaining ones and ran again. My legs still burned from the previous flight. How were these beasts coming? I had not seen them. Were they gifted with many legs? Did they require no gas exchange for locomotion? How had they found us so quickly?? Thoughts tumbled around and fought for precedence. I felt quickly for the younglings still with me.
Ten.
My misery at losing more broadcast to these. Their pace slowed and I could not wrestle their despair from them. A broad cloack of leaves spread and finally, I saw the next family. They were agitated and sent inquiries of the pain, of the fear, of the misery and despair.
I sent all I could. But I had nothing to send but what I had felt myself. They took the younglings from me and Reeharb asked me, "What do they look like? How do we communicate with them? What can we do?" I had no replies.
They settled the younglings with theirs and I was designated a spot on the outskirts of the clearing. I was desginated a failure as I had lost nearly all of my younglings. I hid my feelings and laid, exhausted under coverings. The day was starting.
Pain flashes and skyrending announced that I had led the newcomers to this second family. They ran from the pain. They ran from the earthshattering cracks. They ran from my side of the clearing. And... I hid.
I tried to block as much of the pain out as I could. I tried to hide from their fear. I stayed under the cover of shade while in broad sunlight, they were all tormented. Slowly, as dawn creeps over the horizon, the pain stopped. I felt no more fear. The family was gone.
I felt them leave the encircling trees and I peered from my hiding spot. I was speechless.
Huge. That does not do them justice. They were enourmous, at least as tall as three of us stacked on top of each other. Despite their godlike endurance, they were only bipedial. They had followed us all night on only two legs. TWO!
Their skin was not shiny and it's mottled skin was a strange pattern of greens and blacks that nearly matched in appearance the greens and blacks around it. I felt my own mouth open in shock at the sticks they carried. I felt in my heart those were the skyrending machines they used on us.
I smelled a strange odor, not unlike burnt metal. But otherwise they seemed odorless. Their heads were strange as well. Rounded with two eyes facing forward instead of to the sides as ours do. But the strangest thing was their eating orifice. They were constantly moving and making sounds through it. They seemed in complete control of it and consistently showed each other their razor sharp teeth in a fearsome display.
I waited still. I could not go forward until I knew more.
This began the most fearsome and reprehensible sight I've known. I regret not leaving sooner.
The newcomers collected up the dead and piled them up. Then... then those newcomers became hideous. They desecrated our dead. They stretched each neck and removed their heads. They peeled their skin from their muscles. They opened their bowels. They struck them through with stakes of wood.
They burned them all over open flames.
They ate our dead.